How This Farmer Earning 18 Lakhs from His Bottle Gourd Farm – A Vegetable Farmer Success Story

Hello farmers and gardeners, you know some farmers making good profits with Bottle Gourd farming in India. In this blog post, we will go through one of the success stories of a Bottle Gourd farmer making 18 lakhs from his Bottle Gourd farm. This farmer proved that with proper planning and attention, it is not difficult to earn good profits.

How this farmer earning 18 lakhs from his bottle gourd farm

In which month did bottle gourd grow in India?

Bottle gourd can be grown from seed at any time of the year because of the ease with which it can be propagated. The optimum times to sow seeds are during the summer and monsoon. Seeds germinate in 7–10 days when planted in shallow holes or on raised beds.

In a short time, a bottle of gourd seedlings will take on the climbing behavior of its parent plant. After two to three months from seed planting, harvest time typically lasts between six and eight weeks. It’s best to choose your fruit when the skin is tender and readily scratched or pushed through with your fingernail.

How This Farmer Earning 18 Lakhs from His Bottle Gourd Farm
Image Source

Is bottle gourd creeper or climber?

The weak stems of bottle-gourd plants prevent them from standing independently. Tendrils, however, are a specialized structure of the plant. The thin tendrils coiling structures assist the plant in clinging to solid surfaces. And encourages its vertical expansion and subsequent lengthening.

This means that bottle gourds are climbing plants. To extend its length, it needs something stiff to attach to. The plant’s sturdy stem allows it to climb other plants, trees, and even rods and sticks. Creepers, on the other hand, develop horizontally rather than vertically. Prostate stems are the thin stalks seen in both climbers and creepers.

How many days does a bottle of gourd take to grow?

In about 25-30 days after planting, you should see flowers. Flowers on bottle gourds are pure white and measure about 4 inches in diameter. In 40-50 days after planting, bottle gourds should begin to mature. After 10-14 days, the seeds will germinate and grow into sprouts. Soaking the seeds in water for a full night before planting them can help them germinate more quickly. Do a moisture check on the soil once or twice a day. It’s time to water if you notice any dryness.

Maintaining a healthy Bottle Gourd plant requires consistent watering to prevent soil from drying up. In the growing season, plants respond positively to regular watering by producing flowers and fruit. If the plant isn’t adequately hydrated, it will yield poorly. In hot, humid climates, powdery mildew can spread quickly. In the event of mildew growth, the infected leaves should be discarded. Ensure the plant has enough airflow and water drainage to prevent mildew and decay. To maximize your harvest, plant your bottle gourds in a sunny location.

In which month is bottle gourd harvested?

It grows well in hot and humid conditions.  It grows best at nighttime temperatures of 18 to 22 degrees Celsius and daytime temperatures of 30 to 35 degrees Celsius. It is not able to withstand the cold. Growing it successfully requires sandy loam soil. There should be enough organic matter and drainage in the soil.

Plants for the dry season are seeded in January and February, while those for the wetter season are planted in June and July. In April, farmers spread seeds in the hills. To keep the fruit from decaying and to provide the vines and leaves more exposure to light and air, they are taught to spread on bowers built from thin coconut rope and bamboo poles, which are used especially during the rainy season.

Watering the summer crop should be done every four to five days. The crops that are grown during the wet season get no irrigation. When the bottle gourd has matured, it will be ready to pick between 55 and 75 days after planting. It’s best to choose the fruit while the skin is still soft and green. If the harvest is delayed, the fruit inevitably rots and can’t be sold.

In case you missed it: How This Farmer Earned 5 Lakhs from Fish and Prawn Mixed Farming: A Success Story of an Aqua Farmer in India

Does bottle gourd need full sun?

The soil doesn’t need to be very fertile for bottle gourd to thrive; less fertile land is preferable since it limits the vine’s vigor. However, the plant benefits from moisture-retentive soil in hot, dry weather because the enormous leaf area gets dried quickly under the strong sun. As you would do with runner beans, construct an early spring trench where you want to plant Bottlegourd by filling it with half-decayed leaf mold or compost. Bottle gourds like full sun and protection from high winds while being grown.

How do you make a bottle of gourd grow faster?

It’s best to grow bottle gourds out in the open, where they can get plenty of sunlight. Coco peat and well-rotted manure, applied in equal parts, make an excellent top dressing for your plant. Do this a couple of times more throughout the growing season. If you want your bottle gourd plant to thrive, you’ll need to give it much water. Constant and substantial moisture is essential. Climbers can be trained to be dependable and sharply planted by repeatedly stopping and pinching.

The success story of Mr. Komurayya

Mr. Komurayya is a farmer in Nizamabad who used to grow cotton previously. He faced huge losses due to unfavorable price conditions in the market. As his land is near the city, he chose to cultivate vegetables and sell them to the market. While thinking about what vegetables to grow, he thought of vegetables with short growing seasons. Vining vegetables are some with short growing seasons, less investment, and fewer risks.

Especially bottle gourd has very high demand in the nearby city market, so he decided to start bottle gourd as his crop. Mr. Komurayya owns 7-acre land and started growing bottle gourd in it. Before starting, he thoroughly investigated the best methods to grow bottle gourd successfully. He learned many things and also took the advice of horticultural scientists. Instead of the ground-grown approach, they advised him to choose pergola-type cultivation, making cultivation easier and yielding quality fruit for vining crops.

Utilizing all the knowledge, he started his farm. He initially expected only meager profits, but what he saw was beyond his imagination. The profits involved in pergola-type bottle gourd cultivation are huge. Now let us dive into Mr. Komurayya’s bottle gourd farm, his experiences, difficulties while growing, what safety measures he took while cultivating the crop, and his profits and investments.

In case you missed it: How this Farmer Earning 40 Lakhs from His Cucumber Farm: a Success Story of a Polyhouse Farmer in India

Bottle Gourd Farming
Image Source

Pergola construction details, according to Mr. Komurayya

Bottle gourd is a type of vine you can grow in the ground. This type of farming has many problems, and the fruit isn’t very good. To stop this from happening, he chose to grow pergola bottle gourds. The whole farm needs a pergola for this type of Bottle gourd farming. Mr. Komurayya says that this is an essential one-time investment. A pergola makes it easy for bottle gourd vegetables to grow and develop, and it helps the vines grow smoothly.

Vegetables that have grown and are ready to be picked will be hung from the pergola. Using this method, it is also easy to harvest. Mr. Komurayya estimates that once we build a pergola, it will survive for at least two decades. He built a pergola for growing bottle gourds on his 7-acre farm. Usually, it would cost about 2-2.5 lakhs per acre to build a pergola, but it only cost Mr. Komurayya 1.1 lakhs per acre or 7.7 lakhs for 7 acres.

How did he pull that off? Most people don’t know that building a pergola will get help from the government. Before he started this business, he looked into every detail and found a 50% subsidy. With the government’s help, he built the pergola for his farm for only 7.7 lakhs. Per acre, it takes almost 200 poles to build a pergola. There must be 15 feet of space between each pole. Most people use cheap stone poles in their fields, but they are easy to break while plowing. Mr. Komurayya put up cement poles to stop this from happening.

For vines to grow up a pergola, some wires should cover the top, with a certain amount of space between them. He chose 10mm GI (galvanized iron) wires because they won’t rust and will last for a long time. Mr. Komurayya says that the wires shouldn’t be thin because they are more likely to break over time. From his experience, Mr. Komurayya knows these small things are essential.

In case you missed it: How this Farmer Earning 35 Lakhs from His Capsicum Farm: A Success Story of a Bell Pepper Polyhouse Farmer in India

Bottle Gourd Harvesting
Image Source

Land preparation details, according to Mr. Komurayya

Before starting the cultivation on his land, he added two trucks of animal manure, two trucks of chicken manure, castor cake, and neem powder into his land after plowing. He then started making rows and mounds with 5 feet between each row. Also, mulching covers are essential in bottle gourd cultivation.

After the rows and mounds are made, mulching covers are installed on top of them. Mulching covers prevent any extra vegetation that grows near the plants. In addition, this is used to control the weeds, which help plants gain all the nutrients fertilizer gives.

Bottle gourd cultivation details, according to Mr. Komurayya

He started seed sowing in September 2021. He chose a single variety for his whole farm and didn’t use transplants; instead started cultivating from seed. He insists that farmers grow any crop from seeds as the transplants from any seller cannot be trusted. Also, if you grow any plant from seed and be able to take proper care of it, it will give excellent results, says Mr. Komurayya.

His whole Bottle gourd farm took him nearly 2.5 kg of seeds. The cost of bottle gourd seeds is nearly 4,400 rupees per kg. So he invested almost 13,000 to 14,000 rupees in seeds for his 7-acre farm. Between each plant, there must be about 2 feet of distance in a row. 100 days after planting the seed, the first harvest started, says Mr. Komurayya. Each fruit can weigh nearly 900 grams to 1.2 kg.

This is an ideal weight for a healthy bottle of the gourd. The bottle gourds should be harvested when they are of this size; if not, they may outgrow the ideal weight and becomes ripe, which is not useful for the market. Mr. Komurayya harvests his bottle gourds daily. He harvested nearly 230 tons of bottled gourds and sold them to market.

In case you missed it: How this Farmer Earning 18 Lakhs from His Strawberry Farm: A Success Story  of a Fruit Farmer in India

Bottle Gourd Gardening
Image Source

Trellises are very important, says Mr. Komurayya. When a bottle gourd plant reaches 3 to 4 feet tall, the top ends need to be trellised to the pergola. This helps bottle gourd plants to climb to the pergola. Once it reaches the pergola, it will vine all over the wires on the top, and when the fruits start, they will hang down the pergola. Also, for bottle gourd plants, small horns develop at a particular time that needs to be cut off. This can help the plant to reduce its weight while cutting. He sells his bottle gourds to the market at 10 rupees per kg.

He packs his bottle gourds in covers. Each cover holds 15 bottle gourds, and these covers are transported to the city market. He harvests nearly 3.5 to 4 tons daily. He also says he’s lucky as the market rate for bottle gourd is high so he could get a very high profit. He also says that he rotates vine crops every season. So he doesn’t cultivate bottle gourd for next season. Instead, he goes for any other on-demand vine variety. If crop rotation is not followed, it may lead to fungal infections, says Mr. Komurayya.

He says that his farm got attacked by a minor leaf disease in a small range. For this, he sprayed abacin pesticide and also sprayed nimrod to prevent other minor vine diseases. Bottle gourd cultivation involves huge watering, says Mr. Komurayya. Before the cutting starts, the farm takes nearly 1 hour of drip irrigation. But once the cutting starts, the watering should be done for 8 to 10 hours straight. Drip watering is ideal. So a water source near the farm is a must, says Mr. Komurayya.

In case you missed it: How This Farmer Earning 9 Lakh Rupees from His Ridge Gourd Farm: A Success Story of a Vegetable Farmer in India

Bottle Gourd
Image Source

Investment and profit analysis of Mr. Komurayya’s farm

Mr. Komurayya says that he invested nearly 80,000 rupees per acre, which makes a total of 5,60,000 per acre. And he says that he harvests daily and has harvested nearly 230 tons till now. He sells his bottle gourds at 10 rupees per kg. This makes his income about 23,00,000 rupees. If we deduct the investment from the income, his profit would be 17,40,000 rupees. This is a very high profit for a farmer. He still expects 10-15 cuttings, says Mr. Komurayya.

High selling price, high demand, and quality yield are the vital elements that helped him achieve this profit, says Mr. Komurayya. He advises farmers to get into pergola-type vine crops cultivation as it requires less investment and fewer risks. He is now a financially stable and reputable farmer in his village and is looking forward to expanding his hand into other businesses.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here